Patent Trial & Appeal Board

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Valve Precedent Reined In by Director Review Order

Last week the Director vacated IPR denials based upon a misapplication of Valve Corp. v. Elec. Scripting Prods., Inc., IPR2019-00062, Paper 11 (Apr. 2, 2019) (precedential). As a reminder, Valve, extended the discretionary denial practices set out in General Plastic of so-called “follow-on” petitions of a same party to that of related parties having a “significant relationship.” However, over the years the unique scenario of Valve started to be argued as applicable to more typical scenarios where different parties happened to be litigating the same patent in different, unrelated suits.

Most recently, the Valve drift ensnared an IPR petitioners Honda, GM and Ford based on earlier filings of a co-defendant (Volkswagen). In last week’s Director Review Order the Director made clear that where there are different accused products in different court proceedings there is not a “significant relationship” between filers outside of “relevant or extenuating facts or circumstances.”Continue Reading PTAB Recalibrates Related Party Analysis

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Boardside Chat Thursday

The PTAB will conduct its next Boardside Chat webinar this Thursday, March 21st, from noon to 1 p.m. ET, to discuss hearings before the Board. The presentation will include a virtual tour of the hearing rooms, along with information on some of the updated technical capabilities available, as well as statistics on…

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ANPRM an Unnecessary Slog to a Small Rule Package

It has been almost a year since the Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) released its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on AIA trial practices. As a reminder, the ANPRM was a sprawling collection of rule proposals and requests for public feedback. I previously pointed out that the proposal was unnecessarily ambitious and was destined to be bogged down for proposing to exceed the agency’s regulatory jurisdiction.

Well, the wait is almost over. Continue Reading Where are the New PTAB Rules?

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Post-Amgen Claiming Techniques in Focus

Last year’s landmark decision in Amgen V. Sanofi emphasized that “the more a party claims, the broader the monopoly it demands, the more it must enable.” That is, particularly when claiming a broad genus of antibodies, the specification cannot be a research assignment to engage in trial and error as to the recited claim scope.

Since that time and perhaps dealing with inadequate specifications filed prior to Amgen, prosecutors have considered whether fallback claiming techniques such as Jepson format claiming or mean-plus-function formatted claims can at least secure some protection in the case where broader claims fail.

The USPTO is now committed to providing clarity on these topics in In re Xencor.Continue Reading USPTO Appeals Panel to Clarify Antibody Claiming in MPF & Jepson Format

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Common AIA Issues Discussed

This coming Thursday January 18th (noon to 1 p.m. (EST)) the PTAB will host its first Boardside Chat of the year. The program will discuss issues that typically arise during an America Invents Act (AIA) proceeding before the Board (PTAB). Topics will include:
• Preparing a patent owner preliminary response
•…

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Claim-Based Analysis Required for Pre-AIA Patents Only

One of the more confusing developments in patent law was pronounced in Dynamic Drinkware v. Nat’l Graphics, Inc., 800 F.3d 1375, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2015). In Dynamic the Court held that a provisional application’s effectiveness as prior art under 102(e) depends on its written description support for the claims of the issued patent. In other words, if the patent claims ABC, and C is not supported in the provisional, the provisional loses 102(e) prior art status for all of its disclosure. So, if looking to use the provisional date for AB alone, which is supported, the claim-based analysis would still prevent such reliance.

The applicability of the strange claim-driven analysis of Dynamic was recently considered relative to AIA patents. Today’s precedential PTAB decision makes clear that the AIA statutory framework dispensed with this faulty claim-centric scheme.Continue Reading Dynamic Drinkware Analysis Unnecessary for AIA Patents